One of the pleasures of living in New England is that you are very near to various and sundry attractive vacation destinations. Despite this, I do seem to spend the vast majority of my time eating pastries at Bloc Cafe in Somerville. Somehow, in all my time out here, I’d never been to Acadia National Park, so I went there over the holiday weekend. I know this may come as a shock to some readers, but Maine is very beautiful. HOWever, I wish to complain that this state has really gone all in on marketing around the mighty moose, and yet not a single moose did I see. Every shirt/mug/postcard/what have you has a moose on it. And roughly every twenty feet on the highways, the signage is all, mooses a’comin’! And then you never see one, although obviously on the highway is not an ideal time to see one, or so the driver of the car explained to me when I complained about the lack of moose. The state of Maine owes me one moose sighting.

We did go on a wildlife cruise, where we saw some puffins and seals and also a bald eagle. The bald eagle was chilling on some rocks near the seals, and then it took off and got harassed the hell away from seal island by a flock of seagulls. It was all very dramatic, and I attempted to take a picture of the action for a friend who enjoys bird watching. I annotated the image so he’d understand what was happening, and I’ve decided to include this newsletter’s first ever picture so you can see what kind of cool pictures you’ll receive from me if you indicate you like birds.

Here’s the eagle in happier times:

The seals kind of look like large tubes?

Here’s some puffins, why not:

One more wildlife picture:

What I’m Reading in Print

Lately I’ve read a couple of romance novels, Stars Collide by Rachel Lacey and The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy by Megan Bannen. Stars Collide is about a longtime pop star who is forced to collaborate with a younger star and then go on tour with her when her own album tanks. It’s pretty fun, partly because it doesn’t waste time suggesting that they’d like, be in an ego battle over attention before they fall in love. And Hart and Mercy is a sort of scifi western, where Mercy is an undertaker and Hart is a marshal who collects the bodies of people who died trying to steal things out of a dangerous protected zone that used to have imprisoned gods in it. I think? This book had some confusing mythology in it that I’m not sure I totally followed, but I liked it anyway. They hate each other at the beginning, and then accidentally start writing each other anonymous letters, and fall in love that way. Very You’ve Got Mail or Shop around the Corner.

I also read Leigh Bardugo’s Hell Bent, which is a sequel to Ninth House (hi Dad. This is how I’m telling you I finally read Hell Bent). They both take place at Yale University, where a young woman named Alex Stern works for an organization called Lethe, which strives to monitor the magic rituals of all the secret clubs at Yale. In this universe, they’re not just elite clubs producing the next generation of finance bros via nepotism and family money—they do gross and sinister magic rituals to attain money and power. At the end of the first book, a friend of Alex’s got stuck in hell (typical college problems), so most of this book involves her trying to retrieve him. I mostly like this series (and liked the sequel more than the first book), but I tell you what, it is hard to be interested in the 900 historic buildings on the Yale campus that get described in each book. Look for my upcoming fantasy series set at UMass, which will be about how all 28 floors of the library are haunted or something. The main characters will stop at Antonio’s for pizza and then Bueno Y Sano for a burrito, and all the reviews will be like, are these people hobbits or something? Why do they spend so much time eating? And then the next book will take place entirely at Pasta E Basta. Follow up question: is it time to visit Amherst again??

What I’m Reading Online

The journalist Maureen Ryan has written some really powerful investigative pieces about the toxic culture pervading Hollywood workplaces, and this excerpt from her book Burn It Down about how terrible it was to be a writer on Lost is worth a read.

The writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach was one of the people willing to go on record with his name in the piece, and even expanded on what he’d told her in a piece of his own.

And here’s Ryan talking about why she wrote the book she did, and the ways that Hollywood as an industry tried to pretend its problems were solved after the worst sex offender was removed from power.

Loved this feature about Greta Lee, who says the iconic “sweet birthday baby” line in almost every episode of Russian Doll, and now stars in the romantic drama Past Lives, which I cannot wait to see when it comes to Cambridge.

If you’re a certain kind of aging millennial, an article headlined “Searching for Meg White” is an immediate click. The piece, about the drummer from the White Stripes and the toxic media industry and response from music snobs that might have caused her to step back from the public eye, does not disappoint.

I’m a few months behind on my New York issues, so I just came to this piece about Margery William Bianco, who wrote The Velveteen Rabbit in part out of sorrow at the way her own daughter was outgrowing childish things. I had no idea she was a failed author of books for adults, and or that her daughter was a child prodigy artist.

I am also behind on my New Yorkers, but have started a new project where I bring the most recent ones to my office and read those at lunch while I tackle the huge stack of old ones at home. Look, this magazine publishes on a really punishing schedule, OK? But this article about Planned Parenthood is fascinating. It’s all about how the organization most famously known in this country for battling for reproductive rights is “too cautious and too corporate—forcing independent clinics to take the biggest risks” when it comes to abortion. It’s a pretty damning piece about their failures, and pretty disappointing to read in this era. If anyone is willing to take risks at a time like this, you’d hope it would be them, with all the money and influence they have.

What I’m Listening to

A notable individual in my life got me listening to Orville Peck a while back and lately I’ve been listening to a Tidal playlist designed around his music. But if you’re new to Orville, I would recommend his most recent album, Bronco.

Was I Going to Include Something Else in This Newsletter?

I feel like yes, but I can’t remember what it would have been. If you think of it, please tell me.

Happy Pride!